


Turneth Away Wrath

by beltsquid



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, House of Light, Mithrax's Fireteam, Multi, longing lightly implied but absolutely intended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:47:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23552554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beltsquid/pseuds/beltsquid
Summary: Mithrax's fireteam debate what to do about an unexpected message from the City.
Relationships: Mithrax/His Fireteam
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	Turneth Away Wrath

Hidden carefully in the shadow of a chained hunk of asteroid among the many that make up the Tangled Shore, a Hunter and a Warlock sit perched atop the hull of a Fallen skiff. Below them, its crew swarms about the makeshift dock, busily attending to repairing their ship’s scorched hull. The clamor of metalwork masks the Guardians’ hushed conversation over a holo-projection that the Warlock’s Ghost is spinning for them. 

Not long before they docked, their Ghosts had picked up a transmission marked with old Vanguard headers—ones last used at the Battle of Twilight Gap. To make matters stranger, it contained a message directed to the House of Light from Saint-14. An invitation to speak. All Mithrax could say when presented with it was that there was much to consider, but that it would need to wait until repairs were done.

So they find themselves doing considering of their own, and they keep arriving at the same scenario: what if this ends in a fight? After all, Saint’s hate for the Fallen is legendary. Literally. And as Cayde used to say, nobody could put a Kell down faster.

“You really couldn’t find any archival footage?” The Hunter asks.

“Not of combat, no,” The Warlock says, defeated. “Not with my clearance level, at least.” Everything she found in the Vanguard’s archive related to Saint’s crusades against the Fallen houses appears to be restricted to the office of the Speaker. The more readily available files of old Vanguard meetings and parades does little to give them any idea of what they would be up against if they have to defend their Eliksni allies.

“But we know the stories,” says the Hunter. His eyes gaze, unfocused, into the distance. “Like the one where Saint-14 headbutted the Kell of Devils to death.”

He used to recite the old tales of Saint’s crusades with a kind of excited reverence. It never occurred to either of them that Saint would ever reemerge from Mercury, or that they could regard his legends with dread. But here they are, allied with a new Fallen House, sick with worry for a Kell on the rise. The irony is not lost on them.

The Warlock puts a hand on his shoulder. “We won’t have to win. If things go bad, we’ll just need to buy time.”

“Yeah, against the greatest Titan who ever lived.” His shoulders slump. “C’mon, you’ve seen how two-vee-threes go against sentinels in Trials. And Saint’s THE sentinel. We can’t let Mithrax do this. He’s gonna die!”

“When have we stopped him from doing anything?”

The Hunter just glares at her, still sore about being cut out of last year’s rendezvous at the Tower. The Warlock sighs.

“How’s your Whirlwind Guard?”

“Not a counter to Ward of Dawn, I can tell you that much,” he sulks, and the Warlock suppresses a scream of frustration building at the back of her throat.

“If he pops Ward, we can run. I’m more worried about what happens when he goes on offense,” she explains. “Can you reflect a thrown shield?”

“If I time it, yeah.”

“Then let’s work on your timing.”

The Warlock leaps from the skiff and gestures to the Hunter to follow her, and together they wind their way out of the hidden place where the ship has been docked and search for someplace quiet and open to duel. Such places are few and far between, so they make one for themselves by relieving the wide expanse of the High Plains of a Red Legion patrol. They advance on the corpses of their opponents to find that they had in turn picked off a detachment of House Dusk raiders.

“What a waste,” the Hunter sighs, getting to his knees and pulling a wire rifle from a dead vandal’s claws. He aims at the purple horizon and squeezes the trigger to see if it fires. An arc blast sizzles into the distance. Satisfied that it functions, he straps it to his back to take back to the skiff later. “Sorry little guy,” he says to the corpse that would have stood a head taller than him in life. “But you know how it goes out here.” He folds each set of the vandal’s arms over their chest, and looks to the Warlock.

“We should’ve been fighting these bastards together the whole time,” he sighs, and watches the pressure fluid oozing from a dead Phalanx’s suit form a sickly black pool in the dirt before he resumes picking the Fallen bodies clean of any scrap that could be of use to the crew back at the makeshift dock. 

The Warlock closes her eyes and nods. There’s no need to say what she’s thinking—she agrees, but if they’d gotten here just a little sooner, they would have likely killed this Dusk patrol in self-defense. Since joining Mithrax, it seems they fight as many Fallen as they ever did, although there’s no catharsis in it like there used to be. But if House Light makes a name for itself, it won’t always have to be that way. Traveler knows she’s trying. She relieves a dreg’s body of its shock pistol, then takes it by the wrists and pulls it closer to the bodies of its former compatriots.

“Let’s not chance them coming back as Scorn,” she says. Void Light coalesces in her palm and she unleashes it on the Fallen bodies, disintegrating them where they lie until nothing is left. Only the distant howl of a dust devil whipping across the plain disturbs the uncomfortable silence that follows.

“Guess that was as good a warm-up as any,” The Hunter says, glibly changing the subject, and unloads all his unnecessary gear before engaging in some stretches. He shakes his arms out, plants his feet into the dusty rock, and eyes his Warlock partner. “Don’t pitch ‘em slow, ‘kay?”

“Wait,” the Warlock says, chewing her lips. “We need a Mithrax.”

“What?!”

“The point is to protect him, right? Let’s give you something to protect.”

“Like what? Some rocks?” The Hunter grumbles and gestures to the dry, empty plain.

The Warlock stoops over and grabs the corpse of a psion by the horns of its helm with one hand and its abandoned Headhunter rifle with the other. It carves a shallow trough in the dust behind it as she drags it to her partner and props it up against the gun.

“There,” she says, clapping her hands free of dust.

“Eugh, that’s grim.”

“We’re trying to stop two dying species from feuding themselves into extinction. Everything we do is grim.”

“Did you have to put it like that?” he sighs, and uses the toe of his boot to draw a line in front of their psion prop. “Let’s just do this.”

“Yeah,” the Warlock agrees and takes a position across from the Hunter. A singularity of Void Light bubbles into her fist. She hurls the Nova Bomb at her partner with all the force she can muster. He moves to draw his arc staff into the air, but he’s slow, and her attack devours him and disintegrates the psion’s legs. Seconds later, the Hunter’s Ghost resurrects him in a pillar of Light.

“You could’ve warned me!”

“We can’t count on warnings!” she screams back, and everything inside her explodes: worry over the uncertain fate of her Captain, her ire at her partner’s fatalism, the pointless wars they’re fighting as darker things creep ever closer, and the Nova hurtles at the Hunter like a thrown lance.

The Hunter pulls his arc staff whirling into existence fractions of a second before the attack can land and deflects it at an oblique angle into the eerie eternal twilight of the Reef. What’s left of the Psion’s corpse remains intact.

“Was that your Shaxx?” the Hunter asks.

“No, that was my me. I think I hurt my throat.”

The Hunter chuckles, takes a stance, and gestures at her with his hand to pitch him another one.

They keep at it, dedicated to going as long as their Light will let them. She crafts her Novas to fly faster and harder, he learns the angles he can send it back with the momentum of his staff. After he manages to time it consistently enough where he kills her on her own Nova three times, their Ghosts call for a break. After all, this isn’t one of Shaxx’s arenas; there are no Redjacks securing the area from enemy incursion while they duel. None of this matters if they die final deaths because their poor Ghosts got sniped while their Guardians were distracted by a practice duel for a fight that might not even happen. Tired, they agree, and flop down at the edge of the asteroid.

“You know? I think that went pretty alright,” the Hunter says between heaving breaths.

“Well, I’m no Saint-14. We won’t know how well that went until…”

Silence. They stare out into the yawning expanse of stars beneath their swinging legs. Neither of them can say for certain how much time passes.

“Found you,” the voice of their Captain rumbles behind them like an oncoming storm. Startled, the Warlock yelps and reflexively blinks away from her perch.

Mithrax reacts, lightening-quick, reaching with his primary arm to grab her by the collar of her robes and drag her back onto the surface like a mother cat managing a stray kitten.

“Expect that from this one,” he hisses, jabbing at the Hunter with his secondary arm. The Hunter bats it away and rubs his side.

“It’s a weird day,” the Warlock laughs mirthlessly. “Thank you.”

“Agreed, this day been most strange.” He looks them over, and abruptly continues. “You two. Making plans, yes?” He asks.

“Maybe,” says the Hunter. “Depends. You really gonna answer Saint?”

The Kell of Light takes a long moment, his rebreather burbling with every measured breath he takes as he considers the question.

“A hard choice to make. Ally with the Kellbreaker, Eliksni see a traitor. Turn away Kellbreaker, lose the City.”

“A traitor? Why? Wouldn’t making peace with Saint-14 be a huge deal for you guys?”

The Warlock elbows him in the side. Ignoring his protests, she explains: “If Ghaul miraculously walked out of the Vault of Glass tomorrow and said that he’s ready to be friends now, what would you think of any Guardian who sides with him?”

“Yeah, but Saint only rode in retaliation after they attacked us. He—” The Hunter’s words die in his throat. Mithrax’s four-eyed gaze has grown cold.

“We Eliksni speak a different legend,” he says, voice subdued. They don’t ask, and he does not elaborate. They are quiet a while, not finding what to say. The Warlock is the first to speak.

“You say that, but I know you by now. I know,” she wavers. “I know your heart.” She lifts a phrase from his poetry as her Ghost translated for her some time ago, and immediately worries that she’s gone too far, too intimate. She’s tried so hard to be respectful in their time together, always unsure of how to toe the lines that they cross. To her great relief, he doesn’t draw away or rebuke her for being over-familiar; instead he tilts his head to one side the way he often does while thinking, each of is four beady eyes drawn on her.

“You’ll go to him. You want peace too badly not to. Just … take us with you this time. If Saint-14 won’t listen to you,” she takes a deep breath. “We will do what it takes to keep you safe.”

Unspoken words hang delicately in the air between them, as fine and unseen as spider’s silk. They would die for him. They believe in him. They love him.

Mithrax places his primary arms on their shoulders.

“When we speak our hearts, Varisiis truths win out. Kellbreaker will not break me.”

They reach up and curl their fingers over his own. The Hunter, unable to hold it in any longer, gets to his feet and leaps so he can throw his arms around Mithrax’s broad shoulders and bury his head in the fine furred ruff of his cloak. The Warlock looks up to him, hesitating.

“Come. You as well,” Mithrax says with a touch of mirth. The Warlock raises herself off the ground and nestles her forehead in his collar, arms reaching to grasp the Hunter’s fingers with her own. Four great arms wrap around the two of them. Borne up by his strength, it’s almost enough to make them wonder why they were worried about him in the first place.

“Remember,” he purrs. “We walk—”

“—this hardship-path with joyful hearts,” they chorus.

“Be brave,” He adds, and sets them on the ground. “Or am I bearing you clinging to my back all the way to Mercury like a pair of surly hatchlings?”

“Nama, Mithrax,” says the Warlock, smiling for the first time since she last woke. “We’ll be at your side the whole way.”

“Good. Now clean that up,” he gestures at the mangled remains of the psion leaning against its own rifle like some sort of grim scarecrow. “We do not do such things.”

“But it wasn’t—” the Hunter starts to protest.

“—He’s right, though.” She feels a certain weight of guilt on her shoulders, given it was her idea. “Even if it wasn’t our intention, we shouldn’t leave it up.”

The Hunter removes the psion from the makeshift post. “We taking the guns?” he calls out. Mithrax shakes his head. The Hunter leaves the rifle in the sand and carries the corpse back to the rest of its dead squad.

“Not much more respectful, is it?”

“But less cruel,” Mithrax murmurs. He looks his companions over, determined. “I will answer your Saint. We go together, speak together, save the City together. There is no other way. We cannot run from this.”

“We understand,” says the Warlock, and wonders for the first time if he’s afraid, too.

“Hey bud?” the Hunter ventures. “You too, y’know. Be brave.”

Mithrax rises to his full height, towering over the two of them, and says something in Eliksni that neither of them can follow. “Come. Much left to do at the ship. You tell me all you know of your Saint on the way.”

They take their place at his side, keeping close enough that his great cloak shelters them both on the long walk back to the skiff.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you write fic for the purpose of daring the canon creators to just Joss you already. Osiris asked Saint to contact the House of Light and I'm dying here, Bungie. Don't make me wait 2 years for a follow-up, Bungie. Please let them h*ld h*nds, Bungie


End file.
